I love garlic bread. Who doesn’t, right? I saw this recipe for garlic buns at Torview, which had in turn been inspired by garlic pull-apart rolls at Edible Garden. They look so delicious, I couldn’t wait to try them! The other recipes used chopped up coriander, but I’m not a big fan of that, so I decided to use thyme instead. Luckily, there was still some growing in the garden so I could use it fresh.

Irish soda bread is made, as the name suggests, with bicarbonate of soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate). The soda acts as a leavening agent so you don’t need to add any yeast. It doesn’t need to be kneaded really either, so it’s very quick and easy to make. This recipe is for speckled white soda loaf from Country Bread by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. It’s a bit more special than your average Irish soda bread because it has pieces of dark chocolate added!

Bread sauce is a white sauce that dates back to medieval times and is traditionally served with Christmas dinner. It’s easy to make; you can start infusing the milk in between preparing vegetables and other trimmings and then finish the sauce off while the turkey is resting. If you’re just concentrating on the sauce, it takes about half an hour in total. Continue reading “Bread Sauce”…

I learned something new today. I learned that “granary” is not a type of flour; “granary” is a trade name owned by Hovis. Who’d have thought? Granary flour is made with malted wheat flakes. Granary bread has a lovely nutty flavour, and a denser texture than white bread, but lighter than wholewheat. This recipe uses roughly 2/3 white flour and 1/3 malted wheat flour, making an even lighter loaf, but with the more interesting texture and flavour of a granary loaf. Continue reading “A Granary Loaf by Any Other Name…”…

This tasty cheese bread includes a good dose of mature cheddar cheese. I like cheddar as mature as you can get, so strong that it’s almost gritty in texture. For this loaf though, you could use whatever cheese you are partial to. I cobbled this bread recipe together after looking at several recipes in books as well as online, like this one for cheese batter bread from Tastes Like Home.

Last week I made butter, and the by-product of that was buttermilk. I kept the buttermilk and decided to use it to make bread. I couldn’t find a recipe with the right amount of buttermilk, so I pretty much made this up. I also added a bit of maple syrup that I had left over from the pumpkin pie. As it was already late in the day when I started this, I left the dough to ferment overnight, which makes it much more flavourful.

Like most people, saffron is not exactly an everyday ingredient for me. I came across a half-used packet of saffron in the cupboard with a use-by date of, well, a little while ago. I’m not about to discard such a luxury item, so I had to use it somehow. I bought it in the first place (years ago) to make this bread. I remember it worked out quite well, so thought I’d have another go. This recipe is from Country Bread by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. Their recipe calls for dried fruit, which I believe is traditional, but my version is non-fruity.

So for some reason I decided to make pretzels. Soft pretzels, no less. My recipe was inspired by, and adapted from, the recipe for soft pretzels at Sugarlaws. Here’s the thing: not only have I never made pretzels before, I’ve never actually eaten one either. So who knows how these will turn out? Pretzels are a German speciality and are usually dense and chewy. These, however, are going to be soft pretzels.

Mmmm… English muffins. How hard could they be to make? Actually, not hard at all. I was inspired by the beautiful photos on this post over at Pinch My Salt. Looking at the recipe though, I was slightly put off because I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I had a look around for alternative recipes and found this one by Delia — no buttermilk! I’ll have to try the other recipe another time.